The Periodic Table Battleship Game

Most of us have played Battleship at home at some point in our lives – the opposing player has a fleet of ships that you need to destroy, with you calling ‘shots’ at your opponent’s ships. A homeschooling mom of four kids, Karyn Tripp, who has been a teacher to her children since more than seven years came up with an ingenious idea – she converted the periodic table into a Battleship game of sorts. Here’s how she went about it.

Four identical copies of the periodic table were printed out and the rows labeled in an alphabetical order. Gluing each of the four to hard re-foldable cardboards or file folders, the tables took on a laptop-type of form which could be opened and pinned together at the top while playing in order to create ‘barriers’. The rules are simple: Players play by calling out coordinates, after circling rows of two, three, four and five elements to mark the positions of their ‘ships’. Whoever finds the elements first, circles it and wins the game.

“I came up with the idea because we play Battleship a lot at our house. I was studying chemistry with my kids and we were trying to think of a fun way to memorize the elements. So it just came to me!” says Karyn.

Who could’ve imagined something as exciting as Battleship and as dry as the periodic table could go so well together?